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Thursday, May 22, 2014

Ronald Reagan: "A Trial Of Spiritual Resolve..."

"From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand."

"Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control, and confiscation."

"Basic to their agenda are the tools of indoctrination, propagandizing and proslytization. Once they gain power, as leftists have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed."

Walter Williams continues in his article, "America's Budding Tyrants," with an overview of how so-called "free speech" isn't free anymore and under the guise of "free speech," radical, secular progressives are heard on college campuses and elsewhere while conservatives and Christians are silenced.

Williams says much of it is our fault for continuing to support, with both our tax dollars and in the case of private universities, our donations. Even some Christian universities have fallen under the spell of progressive ideas, Williams says.

The American Pastors Network agrees, but says a part of the blame also rests in the pulpit in American churches.

Some are predicting a collision between the two political parties in America that will fundamentally alter our political process and ultimately our culture, while others are saying this week that the great crises facing our nation is one of ethnicity and diversity.

Both are certainly on a collision course. But both are symptoms, not the cause.

Ronald Reagan was right.

This is a trial of spiritual resolve.

In his article, "America's Budding Tyrants," Walter Williams traces how it was the leftist movement in the 1960s that led the demand for "free speech" at Berkeley and elsewhere.

That movement gave birth to the "hippie movement" where anything could be said or done in the name of freedom. This continued through the 60s into the 70s.

I remember those days very well. I was a youth pastor in North Hollywood.

Now these folks have grown up and are college professors, deans, provosts and presidents of these same colleges and universities. Others are in politics and have even become President of the country.

The Wall Street Journal published an article recently titled, "Obama Unleashes The Left" with a subtitle, "How the government created a federal hunting license for the far left."

The article says, "People fingered as out of line with the far lefts increasingly bizarre claims are being hit and hit hard."

They're being hunted and captured.

The Journal says even Azusa Pacific University, a Christian university, is caught in this web, "postponing" a speech by respected political scientist Charles Murray to avoid "hurting our faculty and students of color."

Williams himself, an African American, agrees and points out that "earlier this year, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of the nation's most accomplished women, graciously withdrew as Rutgers University's commencement speaker after two months of campus protests about her role in the Iraq War."

Will these same people protest against Hillary Clinton when she runs for president, because she, as a senator, voted for the invasion of Iraq?

Of course not. And it's not about race---it's about ideals, it's about values and virtue and spiritual principles.

Williams says earlier this year faculty and students held a meeting at Vassar College to discuss a particularly bitter internal battle over the school's movement to boycott Israel.

To begin the dialog, the English professor moderating it said the discussion "would not be guided by cardboard notions of civility." And it wasn't.

Whether these conflicts are influenced by racism or antisemitism, at the heart, it's about values and spiritual beliefs.

Those advancing the far left progressive agenda want to replace personal liberty with government control---they want to replace equality with entitlement---except when so-called "equality" creates yet another entitlement.

Abraham Lincoln said, "America will never be destroyed from outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Ronald Reagan got it right when he warned us that America's greatest struggles would not be on the battlefield or even a clash of political or economic policies.

He said America is facing "a trial of spiritual resolve; the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated."

The far left progressives are administering assisted suicide to a culture that is in chaos and looking for help.

Sam Rohrer, who heads up the organization, says pastors hold the key to "raising biblical truth in the public square" and leading congregations to understand that Scripture speaks to all aspects of our lives.

Indeed it does.

It was Patrick Henry, one of our Founders who said, "When people forget God, tyrants forge their chains."

If this is true, and I believe it is, then to the degree we "remind" the public of God and His love and power to restore a personal life and a culture, tyrants will be interrupted in their forging.

This is a time to speak, not a time to be silent.

Be Bold. Be Resolved. Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful. Be Blessed. Be Free.